Celebrations and Introductions

Abstract

Celebrations and Introductions Pearl A. McHaney We celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of Eudora Welty’s birth with the metamorphosis of the Eudora Welty Newsletter into an annual journal, the Eudora Welty Review. This inaugural issue of the Eudora Welty Review follows thirty-two years, sixty-five issues in all, of the Eudora Welty Newsletter, and with its reprint of twenty-seven selections, marks the Eudora Welty Centennial. Begun in 1977 as “a relatively informal medium of communication among Welty scholars and collectors” by W. U. McDonald, Jr., the Newsletter biannually fulfilled its aim of publishing bibliographic notes, textual collations, checklists of scholarship, announcements of new works by the author, and lists of newspaper clippings. The first issue included a progress report on Noel Polk’s descriptive bibliography. (Polk was typing, noting collations, and measuring page size in Columbia, South Carolina, at the time.) Michael Kreyling, then at Mississippi State, contributed evidence of his critical acuity with a note on “The Reginald Birch Illustration in The Golden Apples.” In his introduction, “Readers Encouraged,” McDonald wrote, “Believing that journals aplenty exist for their publication, EWN is not intended as an outlet for explications, critical analyses, and more broadly scholarly studies.” In 1997, the Newsletter moved from the University of Toledo and McDonald’s steady and wise editorship to Georgia State University. Noel Polk wrote an appreciation for Bill “Mac” McDonald, recognizing “Mac for having been not just a pioneer in Welty studies, but the inspiration and a sustaining presence as the field had developed over the past three and a half decades” (EWN XXI.1 [Winter 1997]: 15). My contributions to the cosmos of Welty studies are but in their infancy compared to the work of the two great constellations of W. U. McDonald and Noel Polk. They gave me my first opportunities, corrected my wanderings, and offered their Newsletter to my care. Although the Eudora Welty Review veers from the course McDonald first set, it has his blessing. We will continue to publish bibliographic and textual notes, queries, and checklists, but EWR will be primarily a journal of Welty scholarship and criticism. In determining which of the more than three hundred pieces published between 1977 and 2008 to reprint in the inaugural EWR, we wished [End Page 1] to show the variety, the significance, and the imaginativeness of Welty studies. We selected John Bayne’s textual collation and research on the musical phrases in the Levee Press limited edition of Music From Spain to illustrate Noel Polk’s brief comments about textual analyses. Over the last decade EWN published research on international Welty studies, represented in this issue by Maria Sciacco’s essay on Welty in Italy with a case study of the translations of “Livvie.” Exploring Welty’s cosmos with essays on books Welty or her characters read and on the author’s peers has been a rewarding enterprise in EWN; here we reprint essays by James Shimkus relating “Sir Rabbit” to texts by Joel Chandler Harris and Zora Neale Hurston, Joan Wylie on Elsie Dinsmore, and Leslie Gordon on The Re-Creation of Brian Kent. EWR is delighted to reprint reminiscences by renowned author Elizabeth Spencer and the editor of Collected Stories John Ferrone; a seriocomic essay on humor by Lois Welch; and an essay on Welty’s photographs by British historian Stuart Kidd. Other essays add to our understanding of “A Worn Path,” “Clytie,” “Why I Live at the P. O.,” Delta Wedding, The Shoe Bird, The Ponder Heart, and The Robber Bridegroom. The last two essays illustrate the kind of specific critical assessments that we hope to bring back to Welty studies with serious analytical book reviews: Danièle Pitavy-Souques’s appraisal of Delta V and Michael Kreyling’s review of three books of essays on Welty. EWR is now prepared to accept submissions for the 2010 issue. Guidelines and peer review policies are outlined on our website (www2.gsu.edu/~wwwewn). In the 2010 issue, Geraldine Chouard will conclude her study “Welty A to Z,” and Cathy Chengges’s annual checklist of Welty scholarship 2008–2009 will update the compendium checklist from 1986 to May 2008 published in the 2009 Mississippi Quarterly Eudora Welty...